incrediBILL - 12:46 am on Jan 16, 2013 (gmt 0)

[reuters.com...]

A judge has found that two news organizations improperly used images that a photojournalist had posted to Twitter in one of the first big tests of intellectual property law involving social media. Agence France-Presse and The Washington Post infringed on the copyrights of photographer Daniel Morel in using pictures he took in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan ruled.

Finally, the courts agree that posting to the internet doesn't make something public domain unless it's expressly stated to be public domain.

RETWEETING is not the same as publishing elsewhere, or using for commercial purposes.

The newspapers should've known better as they're well aware of photographer rights and image copyright issues regardless of whether it's being posted on twitter, facebook or the author's website doesn't change the ownership and copyright situation of the image itself.

More importantly, most images aren't actually posted on twitter, they are linked from twitter so posting a link to an image from twitter doesn't mean squat.

Scrapers beware ;)